This is one of those boring personal threads where somebody asks for advice, this time legal!

Because you can't prove anything. That's why.

Ally xpost!!!

Yeah. This may be one of those occasions when you have to learn a lesson the hard way and move on. Unless you could figure out a way of getting the store to provide proof of purchase your way, which would be really hard, considering you paid for it with cash.

This is a really strong argument for keeping receipts, BTW. You should ALWAYS keep receipts for things like this. And you should try to pay for bigger-ticket items with either checks or cards (debit or credit) so you'll have an even stronger paper trail should something like this happen to you again.

You MIGHT be able to recover the machine after going through the rigamarole of legal action, but that's a very iffy sort of thing and not something you should really rely upon. Anyway -- yeah. Time will catch up with her, don't worry. But as for now -- live and learn, y'know?

Beat her, like the good folks said.

And: Mickey, the lesson could just be to purchase things with a credit/debit card or a check and keep your receipts so that if something like this happens again, you have proof that the property is yours and that if there's any damage incurred to it that the person who stole the item from you should have to give you the same amount of money you spent on said item. You know, so you won't end up hurting in the end.

But if a) she doesn't have the PS2 anymore or b) doesn't have any money, than you're not getting anything even if you can prove your case.

but you have to be! welcome to real life. sadly a lot of people are mooches and deadbeats -- being trusting is all well and good, but you still have to suss a person out before you can decide to trust them.

1) Damage her property (illegal)
2) Steal back your PS2 (mostly illegal)
3) Do nothing / buy a new PS2 (legal)

I should just slit her throat and leave the country.
NOTE TO FBI PROBABLY READING THIS: I'M JOKING

Any creative revenge ideas that won't get me arrested would be great.

so

1) phone her up and tell her you're really sorry you havent been a good friend recently, and, also you know she's having a rough time recently, and, that she hasn't got much money, and, as you've come into rather a lot of money recently, you'd like to make things up to, with a gesture of goodwill, and, "i hope you're not offended or anything, or see it as charity, but, i'd like to give you the playstation 2"

2) wait one year to 18 months, till she's forgotten all about you

3) a steady chain of pointless and untraceable minor revenges, that should last between 3- 5 years

If that isn't an option, get a new one, no legal proceeding, even small claims, is cheap enough to make going after a 150 dollar worth it.

1) Ring her up, tell her you have a terminal illness and therefore you want to have peace between you and her so she can keep it rather than just willing it to her. Cough a few times.

The only lesson to learn here is NEVER EVER EVER lend appliances/machines out to people, EVER. Even if they are family members. You will either lose yr property, or you'll get it back fucked. In fact, I'd lay money on her having broken the machine, and this being the reason for her not giving it back.

Looking at the appliances I get in for repair, at least 4/5 of the machines I've got in have been lent out to family members or friends, and have come back broken. Again, NEVER lend out. It's a good way to lose friends.

What I would do is make sure everybody knows the story here, that she is not trustworthy. If yr leaving, what have you to lose?

I would forget all thoughts of revenge other than this - the possibility of it backfiring on you is strong, given that most people seem to have this weird ability to seperate cause from effect w/r/t stuff like this. I would avoid all contact w/her, and if you have mutual friends, make sure they know why.

Sorry.

You could wait outside her apartment and then follow her to her door and invite yourself in. Then just take the PS2. Having some thuggish friends with you might help.

My guess, though, is that she has sold/broken the ps2 and that's why you're not getting it back. Most people would have crumpled under your attentions plus a police raid.

Make sure you find out whenever she's having parties, and call the police to every one.

OTM!

She's applying for a new job, and I'm going to tell the future boss about her.

Also, she's in a sorority, and on eBay she sold her sorority letters. Now I'm not sure, but I think they would be seriously pissed about that. I'm going to narq her about that, and tell her sorority all about how she's a thief.

I'm also telling our current boss at the moment about her.

Lastly, some woman at our job (the student union) overheard us talking about the incident. She specifically heard her comment about "your [my] PS2" and how she put it at the old apartment with the roommates who hate me, and when I got upset about it, the woman said, "Oh man, that sucks!" If I can find this woman again, I'm going to ask her to testify for me. If she does testify, I think I'm going to take the risk and pay the $70 to take her to court. Any thoughts? Could I maybe win that?

Well, from what I understand, in a civil case the fee is paid by the losing party. So, if I win, the only thing lost would be the time I spent on it. If I lose, I'm $70 further down the drain.

I don't want to live in a world where somebody can pretend to be somebody else's friend for half a year, and for absolutely no reason steal $150 worth of property from them with zero reprecussions.

1/ I lent a casio mt41 keyboard to a hippie I knew/know, back in the eighties. I never saw it again. He admitted to me a few years ago that he sold it to buy dope.

2/ I lent some CDs to the guitarist in a band I was in. The band kicked me out in a somewhat upsetting manner, and the CDs are lost forever as far as I can tell. They're only CDs, yes, but one of them was the 1000 copy limited edition of "the long hello volume 1" which is a favourite, & total unobtanium.

3/ I lent some guitar effect pedals to a friend years ago, including an original electro-harmonix electric mistress. He vanished off the face of the earth some time ago.

I'm forgetting something else as well, some hard to replace item that's gone forever.

I learned my lesson. DON'T LEND STUFF OUT IF YOU WANT TO GET IT BACK.

Umm so dude, the fact that you called the police over and created an official record of this whole situation kinda means that you can't do much now apart from taking her to small-claims; even just calling her up a lot will give her an opportunity to say you've been harrassing her, which, hey, she might not have done before, but if you put the police on somebody they get strangely happy to put the police on you. Unless you can dig up something concrete, just write it off. Or, if you want to risk a whole lot of time and money, you can take her to small claims and pray that either (a) she'll just give you some cash to spare her the hassle, or (b) the coherence and obvious honesty of your story will triumph over her cagey inconsistent lies, in which case you might get awarded like $70.

I wouldn't count on B, though, cause the story as you've told it doesn't even entirely make sense. She was friendly with you for all this time just as a prelude to buttering you up and stealing your PS2? She was so dead-set on stealing the console that she managed to turn everyone else in the apartment against you? No, something's missing there. I'd sooner believe that she lost it or broke it or lent it to someone else and she was just blowing the whole thing off until the police showed up -- at which point the claim became that she wasn't the one being weird?

Is she a student? This happened to me once, and I went straight to legal aid. Basically, they wrote the offender a stern letter.

Of course, I had receipts to back it up.

Many places, however, keep receipts in their databases. I sometimes
have to get a copy of a receipt for my job. If you paid for it
with cash, however, it would be useless to obtain one.

If you paid with a CC, it would help to give them the approximate date and the number.

Things like this really piss me off, not because of the value of the item, but because people do this shit just to fuck with you. People laugh at me for getting angry about this stuff, but the fact that she did it is a sure sign that there's one more nasty bitch in the world. Nasty bitches need to be socially ostracized, at the very least.

xpost

But STILL I don't believe we're getting a good slant on this story, because look at the text up there: she stalls him, she stalls him, and then finally she says she'll meet him at the apartment, and then .. she "refuses" to give it back? What does that mean? Did she open the door? What did she say? "I won't give it to you?" "I don't have it?" "What were you doing in the bushes last night?" And how did things proceed to calling the police -- essentially concluding that she was no longer stalling and now just outright stealing -- and then warning the police that the residents would probably lie about it? I'm not saying the story's a lie, just that it's kind of riddled with questions and holes, as if there's some other dynamic to all this that we don't have access to.

KATIE CLINE FROM CHARLOTTE, NC IS A FUCKING BITCH WHO STOLE MY PLAYSTATION 2 AND I HOPE EVERYBODY WHO GOOGLES THE NAME "KATIE CLINE" FINDS OUT.

Ok, I used to live in Apartment A. I lived there with my girlfriend. She owned a TV, and I owned a PS2. Back in December '04 we broke up and I chose to move out. A week or so later, the ex-girlfriend moved out too. Since it was short notice, I didn't have tons of time to find a great new place. I just looked at advertisements and I found a 4 bedroom apartment leasing 1 single bedroom. It was extremely cheap, so I took it. This is apartment B.

Living over in apartment B was Ian, the idiot who I wrote about in a past thread who thinks Bill O'Reilly is a communist and the French are selling nuclear weapons to Iraq. His girlfriend is Katie. Also living in the apartment was Ben, a complete asshole, and a Russian guy who was really friendly but also a real hermit who always stayed in his room and never interacted with anybody. He was practically like a piece of furniture.

I immediately realize that Ben and Ian are idiots, but I always act friendly to them anyways. Katie, I actually like. She seems like a good person who is also interesting. She doesn't actually live in apartment B, although she practically slept there every night.

Ian and Katie were going through a rough spot. Ian is a drunken, abusive bastard. This one particular night, spurred on by absolutely nothing, he started breaking things around the apartment and then started physically threatening Katie. He was about to hit her before me and Ben got between the two and separated them. Ben then kept Ian away while I helped Katie gather her belongings and carry them down to her car. At this new apartment, I didn't own a TV and my PS2 just sat worthlessly in my closet. Before I'd offered to let Katie borrow mine since she had become somewhat of a "friend," and I certainly didn't have a use for it and she wanted one. So, that night I carried down the PS2 with the rest of her other stuff, figuring it was as good a time as any to give it to her.

A couple weeks later, living at the apartment became unbearable. Ian and Ben both, for no real reason other than the same petty roommate bickering that everybody has (it's your turn to buy dishwashing soap! no, it's your turn! no, you! etc) really started to hate me. I mean, really started to hate me. They treated me like complete shit. Damaged my personal property, threatened violence, etc. Living there became simply unbearable.

Ian and Katie started patching things up and they got back together. She stayed "friends" with me though. I got her a job at the campus student union, where I also work. She stayed friendly with me and when Ian wasn't around, we'd talk and hang out. Then, when Ian was around, of course I knew I couldn't talk with her or else he'd just burst into one of his random, pointless fits of rage. She talked to me about how she doesn't understand why Ian acts like he does, it's totally unjustified, etc, etc, despite the fact that she stayed with him this entire time.

Around early March, I decided I had to move out. The mental strain from living there wasn't worth it, and I thought it was only a matter of time before there'd be a physical confrontation too. I found a subleaser and moved out to apartment C, where I am now, and it's great. Again, it's random roommates I don't know, but these people are nice and totally reasonable. There hasn't been a conflict yet.

Since I moved out, I kept in touch with Katie. I'd see her at work and we'd make small talk. She, of course, still had my PS2. About two weeks ago, I started asking for it back. Every single time, it conveniently never happened. She'd tell me to call her later that night, and then her phone was turned off. Things like that. Obviously I began to get suspicious. Well, I was already suspicious. I became a lot more suspicious than I already was.

Two days ago, all my suspicions were confirmed. On Mondays, she goes to work to open up. Then, I go in and replace her. Then, she comes back and replaces me.

So, the night before I'd asked for the PS2. When I got there in the morning to replace her, she told me. "Oh, I dropped it off at apartment B with Ben since you know where that apartment is (but I didn't know the new place that she moved to) and you can just go there and pick it up from him." Obviously I was furious. Ben hates me. He definitely was NOT going to give it back. I tell her this. She apologizes and says she wasn't thinking, she didn't realize Ben hated me -- obvious bullshit. I kept nagging her about it, and she finally told me she'd be at apartment B when I got off work at 5:00 PM, and I can get it from her then. When I got off work, I started calling her. I called three times and she didn't pick up.

I knew it'd come to this. I called the police and told them the situation. They agreed to meet me at the apartment. So, I got to the apartment and decided to try my luck before the police got there. I knocked on the door and Ian opened it.

"Hi, I'm here for Katie," I said. I didn't want to cause a meaningless conflict with him. I just wanted my fucking PS2 so I could leave.

He told me then, "Just so you know, if you fucking threaten my girlfriend again, you're going to regret it." This is the type of thing he always did; make up imaginary conflicts and then fight over them. I told him I hadn't threatened her at all. His answer was, "Bullshit, you've been harassing her calling over and over!" Um yeah, obviously, she has my property.

He then closed the door. A couple seconds later he opened it again and said, "By the way, there's nothing for you here."

I said, "Look, Ian. The cops are on the way. You can just give it to me now or wait for them to get here." He told me that was fine and closed the door.

So, I sat on the curb and waited 45 minutes for the police. When they got there, as I wrote above, Ian and Katie lied and claimed the PS2 wasn't mine. It then became disputed property, and it appears now that I'm fucked.

Story makes sense now?

Fuck that bitch. I hate her. I really don't understand how people so horrible can exist in the world. If you google her AIM screenname, "lilcatwngs" you can see a bunch of forum postings where she talks about her past problems with anorexia and bulumia. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Fucking bitch.

Okay, the instant you learned this piece of information you should have thrown holy water on her.

This is the ex and no, no fur will fly - I'm much too amused by the whole scenario. As for us being "stupid" for getting caught up in the arguments, what the hell else is there to do in Charlotte? It's for the intellectual's amusement and speaks not to our intellect, simply to the lack of entertainment on a given weeknight. Hello everyone, I have joined the party.

-- KatieC (cryingflam...), February 2nd, 2005 10:19 PM. (lilcatwngs) (link)

The one who I thought I could trust because she laughed along with me at her retarded boyfriend on ILM!

...who would have thought she'd turn out to be a bitch?

Judging from the story as you just told it, you should be hating on Ian, not her. I mean if I were judging from just that, my guess would be that (a) Katie gave the PS2 to Ian, which was why it was in his apartment; (b) she was afraid to bug Ian about getting it back; (c) when she did bug him she totally blamed it on you ("I only ask cause he's so weird, Ian, he keeps calling and bugging me and it's kind of creepy"); and then (d) when you forced the issue, she decided it was easier to have you mad at her than bother her boyfriend, a decision you made slightly easier by calling the police. ("See, Ian? He's totally nuts.")

Anyway, dude, that console is totally gone.

Okay, so I was eating breakfast, sitting in the common area. I was flipping through some girly magazine that Katie left on the table. Ian walks in, stares at me for a few seconds, and then grabs the magazine from my hands and puts it on the other side of the table.

Ian: DON'T TOUCH MY GIRLFRIEND'S SHIT!!!!

Me: I'm sure Katie will be soo upset that I touched her magazine.

Ian: IT DOESN'T MATTER, IT'S NOT YOURS, SO DON'T TOUCH IT!!!

Me: Ian. I really don't understand what I ever did to you. Why do you hate me so much?

Ian: BECAUSE YOU'RE A FAGGOT!!!!!

I laughed then.

Me: You know, Ian. I really should get angry at you, but I don't. I just feel sorry for you. I don't know what could have possibly made you such an angry little man.

This is when I decided to get up and start walking back to my room.

Ian: I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU!!!

I know, it sounds absurd. Before I moved in, I didn't think people like that existed. I really didn't. Everybody who I know didn't believe me that my roommates could possibly be that bad. Then, they'd come visit, and they'd say the same thing. "I didn't think people like that really existed." It really is just absurd. The reason I trusted Katie is because she told me the same thing the entire time -- she seemed just as confused about why Ian and Ben are Ian and Ben as I was.

She stood up to him before. Like I said, he likes to make up imaginary conflicts and then fight for them like the fate of the free world depends on it. One time he was screaming at her that she was "taking his [my] side." She didn't cave in at all. She just kept telling him to calm down and told him that he's being ridiculous.

I still find the sudden-hating mysterious, but maybe I'm not enough of a cynic. Now that her name's on here, maybe Katie and Ian and Ben will post to this thread and explain themselves? And then we can play Judge ILX Mathis and adjudicate!

Mickey -- dude, I'm not saying she didn't screw you, just that it's kind of a bigger interpersonal dickdom issue than just her straight-out stealing it. God knows what she told Ian about the situation or what he told her he was about to do; could be she said "this guy's been bugging me about it" and he went all gung-ho and decided he was going to tell you to fuck off entirely. I have seen this many times before in my extensive Judge Mathis viewing.

Mickey, you should call Sony and as if maybe, just maybe, every PS2 has the secret capability to emit a cloud of semi-toxic malodorous gas into the surrounding apartment, to be activated in just this kind of situation.

Seriously, it's kind of nutty to call the cops over this (you didn't see the whole 'and then they claimed it wasn't mine' thing coming from the start?) and you've spent too much time and energy on it. Move on, don't commit any acts of petty vandalism since the police know you're pissed at these two, buy an Xbox.

x-post

Which is to say that I don't think anyone here is trying to be mean or deny your loss -- just that this is the kind of thing you have to get used to and learn not to get too worked up or vengeful about. Seriously, it happens. It happens the other way around, too -- there may come the moment where you inadvertently screw someone over, due to whatever set of circumstances happens to catch you up. I can't find any non-cliche way to put it: you just kind of have to roll with this stuff.

(Ally, I think he called the cops from the hallway? There are slight holes in this story.)

I think that calling them before he went to the apartment is a bad thing, if that's what happened.

So, I called the police and waited about 45 minutes before they came.

I knew it'd come to this. I called the police and told them the situation. They agreed to meet me at the apartment. So, I got to the apartment and decided to try my luck before the police got there. I knocked on the door and Ian opened it.

Not saying that necessarily happened, just that there are lots of things we can imagine filling the mistier holes in Mickey's retelling. Which is just further reason to conclude that the whole story is maybe a mess and he should just write that console off.

Ally, I have no idea how I became gay in this questioning. Conversations with cops don't wory like conversations with normal people -- I was just saying whatever seemed most likely to make the conversation end, and somehow the fibs snowballed into some kind of boyfriend-trauma story. I think part of my goal was to make the guy uncomfortable and maybe exploit his possible confused-homosexual stereotypes to explain why I was behaving in a way he found weird. Unfortunately he was too dense to pick up on the homoerotic implications, and so my ploy totally failed to throw him off-script.

i'm still not understanding how she can see you with a straight face at work. i would give her one warning, then i would just socially bash the hell out of her. no joke. tell your boss. tell your coworkers. "piece of advice, NEVER lend anything to Katie." etc etc. i would just make it common knowledge amongst any shared acquaintances that she's a total theif and cannot be trusted. hell, post flyers up on campus. if you truly have the moral upper hand here, fuckin bomb them. tell their landlord that they have stolen property in their apartment.

none of these things will get your ps2 back, and maybe it'll start a war you don't want, but...

do they hate you because of the dumb roommate thread? i know i would probably be more than just a little pissed off if i was them.
m.

I'm not doing anything to get revenge on her that I haven't already done, meaning, call her out on this thread that most likely will never ever affect her.

Final part of the story: today as I was walking into work, I got there just in time to hear my boss saying, "Well okay then, you have the job" to Katie's boyfriend, Ian. The world is a cold, cold place.

I don't know how she could look at me anymore either. Today she passed by me. She looked in my eyes for one second, looked extremely guilty, and then took out her cell phone to stare at while she walked the rest of the way.

people get there's. and maybe they already are. i mean hell, she's dating a moron!
m.

If anything, I think it might be too late by now. I'd just be really cool to the entire situation and see what happens. I would imagine that acting really interested in getting it back was what freaked them out to begin with. If anything, Katie probably mentioned it to Ian and he went off on how you were always on his case, etc. You've probably given them something to bond over! The police thing completely blew it, because now you're the guy who can't even work out his own shit. I would have tried mutual friends, coworkers, anything before that. You've now pushed the cops on someone who you're probably going to run into. Baaaad. Just walk away, play it off, and if anyone ever mentions it, just go "oh man, I can't believe that shit happened, my dog died that week and my test came back positive and.. etc. etc." Make it into the worst week ever, play it off like you totally don't do that shit and the PS2 was just an outpouring of a week's worth of grief.

If getting it back is a big deal for you, then returning it is a big deal for them.

Honestly Mickey, the number of times you've referred to things as "your property" here raises a few flags with me, not least -- and pardon me for saying so, but it stuck out to me -- because of your extremely ambiguous description of your relationship with Katie.

Is there zero lingering attraction for this girl?

IRRITATION that a nice girl, who you say on this thread that you "like," is going out with an intolerable asshole like Ian?

A girl you later call a "bitch"?

The scene you describe at work is a classic of post-emotional-connection vibes, and maybe it's just a coincidence but your posts here at least suggest otherwise.

Ian and Katie started patching things up and they got back together. She stayed "friends" with me though. I got her a job at the campus student union, where I also work. She stayed friendly with me and when Ian wasn't around, we'd talk and hang out.

Judge Mathis is actually pretty good about listening to people argue about, say, a phone bill, and then suddenly going "hold up, you were totally pimping her cousin, weren't you," and then the guy's like "yeah," and the audience is amazed: what vast sage experience in human nature and behavior this judge must have to have figured that out! This whole PS2 saga is like some kind of Rorschach blot in exactly those terms -- there's all this concrete stuff about who had what when, but the actual progress of the relationships and how people feel about each other is so totally vague and muddy and seemingly random (unexplained sudden hatreds, weird m/f/m triangle dynamics, etc) that we can't help but start wondering.

That's why I keep posting here! It's like Law and Order or something, I need that turnaround bit where we suddenly see how it all went down.

You guys can keep looking for the secret plot twist. I promise to tell you if you figured something out that I didn't mention, but that really is the whole story minus banal details like what t-shirt I happened to be wearing on that day.

Also, regarding the cops... I have a feeling that if my question, instead of being "Can I in court?" was, "This bitch stole my Playstation 2. It's in her boyfriend's apartment. They are refusing to give it back. Should I get a bunch of friends together to kick their asses, or what?" ... I can imagine the answers I'd be getting then would be, "Don't risk getting arrested. Call the cops!" There ain't no pleasing people.

Though if he had, you'd have had to put out, right? "I should arrest you, faggit, but maybe there's something you can do for me first..." Nabisco + bent cop slashfic please!